The Stunner was backstage at the Starland Ballroom for Fight Factory Wrestling‘s No Thanks Given, where the landscape of the company changed in an instant. Joey Janela walked out of Sayreville as the new Premier Champion, but our conversation went far deeper than just title belts and match results.

Janela got into everything from the terrifying fallout of Sabu’s final match to the current “bleak” state of independent wrestling. Plus, he told me a story about a Lamb of God mosh pit that happened right where we were standing that you have to hear to believe.

Here is what the “Bad Boy” had to say.

Meeting Your Idols & The Promise in Vegas

Before we got into the controversy, Joey took me back to the beginning of his relationship with the ECW legend. He admitted that Sabu was always in his top three favorites growing up, alongside Terry Funk and Mick Foley. When he saw Sabu as a kid, his reaction was immediate: “Holy [expletive], this is the wrestling I want to do. This is the wrestling I want to do.”

However, their first encounter wasn’t exactly a dream come true. Joey recalled a show they did together for ICW in 2016 that didn’t go the way he wanted. Sabu was beat up at the time and, according to Janela, was kind of a jerk to him. “Man, you know when they say don’t ever meet your idols? That was kind of a situation for me,” Joey confessed.

The bridge between them ended up being Sabu’s late partner, Melissa Coates. Joey had wrestled her when he was just 19 years old, and she always took a liking to him. She would tell him, “Janela, he really loves you. You’re really one of his favorites.” Years later, when Joey started hanging around The Nerd Bar in Las Vegas, where Sabu was a regular, they truly connected. Joey noted that after Melissa passed away, Sabu was a “shattered man,” and Joey started spending time with him there.

It was during those nights in Vegas that Sabu made the request. He told Joey, “Listen, when I call it quits, one of my last matches, I wanted to have it against you.” Joey admitted he was skeptical at first, thinking Sabu was just messed up or trying to secure a payday, but GCW promoter Brett Lauderdale stepped in and made it a reality.

“They Said I Was A Murderer”: The Sabu Fallout

The most heavy-hitting part of our conversation revolved around Joey Janela’s Spring Break last year, where Joey wrestled ECW legend Sabu in his final match. Following Sabu’s passing just weeks later, the internet turned on Janela in a way that was frankly disturbing.

Joey opened up about the vitriol he faced, telling me, “Everyone dogpiled me. They said I killed Sabu, that I was a murderer.” The harassment went beyond just mean tweets; it escalated to legitimate threats against his life.

“People were messaging me on anonymous accounts saying, ‘Don’t come to GCW in Dallas because I’m going to have a gun and I’m going to avenge Sabu’s death. I’m going to kill you,’” Janela revealed. He described people coming up to his merch table at shows, throwing things at him, and calling him a “piece of shit.”

Despite the public backlash, Joey found solace in the fact that Sabu’s actual family knew the truth. “Sabu’s family, his sister, his nephews, Rob Van Dam, his wife, they’ve been so nice to me. They know I didn’t mean anything. They know we sent out Sabu on the best note possible,” he said. Joey looks back on that match as the most rewarding moment of his career, noting that the bell ringing after Sabu beat him was the best sound he ever heard because “the crowd was on their feet, they were chanting Sabu, and they appreciated what we did.”

Is the Indie Wrestling Boom Over?

We also touched on a hot topic in the industry right now: the health of the independent scene. With major promotions like DPW (Deadlock Pro Wrestling) and Prestige announcing hiatuses or closures, I asked Joey if the indies are dying.

His answer was blunt: “I said, ‘Bleak.’ Which is kind of true. I just think it’s not only independent wrestling. I think it’s the big boom that we saw in professional wrestling is kind of over.”

Janela explained that the trickle-down effect is real. When WWE and AEW aren’t drawing as well as they were during the peak boom, the indies suffer too. He called the DPW news a “shocker for everyone,” noting that they were the alternative to GCW. However, he doesn’t think the scene is dead, but rather that promoters need to change their formula. He pointed to GCW and Brett Lauderdale as the exception, noting that they are doing fine because they use regional talent, work with local companies, and are smart about payouts rather than overspending on expensive fly-ins.

Spring Break 10 & Saudi Arabia

Looking ahead, Joey Janela’s Spring Break 10 is coming up, marking a decade of chaos. I asked him how the planning starts for such a milestone event, especially after topping last year’s Sabu retirement. “This year is the tenth, so we got to go big or go home this year,” Joey said.

I jokingly asked if he would take the 11th annual Spring Break to Saudi Arabia. Joey shut that down immediately. “No, I don’t think so… I don’t think Spring Break will get over well over there.” Instead, he pitched a different idea: “Maybe I can ‘All In’ it… Let’s get a 10,000 seater and ride the lightning, baby.”

Discovering ECW at Summer Camp

Joey and I also bonded over our shared roots as tri-state area kids discovering the insanity of ECW during the 90s boom period. For Janela, his introduction didn’t happen in the arena, but at a local summer recreation camp in Hazlet, NJ.

He painted a perfect picture of that era, explaining that the camp counselors were just as obsessed with wrestling as the kids were. “The camp counselors will say, ‘Who likes wrestling?’… Let’s go in the rec center and we’ll watch whatever VHS pay-per-view they recorded the night before,” Joey remembered.

They would watch WCW tapes like Bash at the Beach ’97, but one day, the counselors popped in an ECW tape, and it changed everything. Joey specifically recalled seeing a familiar face in a new environment: “And Bam Bam Bigelow… I’m like, ‘Bam Bam Bigelow, he’s from Jersey. What? I haven’t seen him in years. What is he doing?’” Seeing the chaotic, comic-book crossover style of ECW characters mixed with the violence hooked him immediately, leading him down the path of tape trading and eventually, into the ring himself.

Knocked Out at Lamb of God

Since we were standing in the Starland Ballroom, a venue legendary for its metal shows, we started talking music. Joey revealed that while he listens to everything from house music to alternative rock, he learned a hard lesson about metal shows right in that very room.

“I went to a Lamb of God show here in this [expletive] building and I went to the Wall of Death actually,” Janela recalled. “It was a bad idea because I threw my fist and I backfisted this guy in the face… this massive guy… and he started bleeding out of the nose.”

The result? Instant karma. “He looks at the blood on his hands and just laid me the [expletive] out absolutely… I was on the ground going ‘Why man?’ He’s like, ‘You punched me in the face.’ Sorry dude.” Joey said after that knockout, he decided, “This is not for me… I like to watch from the back.”

Make sure to subscribe to The Stunner on YouTube for more exclusive backstage access. See more interviews from the show here, and watch the full event here.